


Before You Go

by roonilwazlib69



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Triwizard Tournament, Worried Fred, fredric - Freeform, george sees all, sweet cedric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25471312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roonilwazlib69/pseuds/roonilwazlib69
Summary: “Before you go...kiss me. For good luck.”“For good luck my arse.”
Relationships: Cedric Diggory/Fred Weasley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Before You Go

Fred was tracing patterns on the back of Cedric’s neck and the Hufflepuff shivered despite the warmth of the day. They were holding onto their last few hours before the final task of the Triwizard Tournament and Fred was trying to capture the memory of how Cedric’s hair smelled before he became a Champion and inevitably forgot all about him.

Cedric sighed and made to sit up but Fred tightened his grip of the older boy’s waist, keeping him locked firmly at his side.

“Don’t go yet,” said Fred in an unusually serious tone.

Cedric looked up and studied his face, perhaps trying to count the freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks, perhaps trying to work out what had Fred so riled.

Perhaps both.

“You okay?” He was aiming for casual and lighthearted, the only language the Weasley ever seemed to speak, but he couldn’t keep the concern from edging into his voice.

Fred sighed, making it all the more clear that he was not, in fact, okay, albeit making no effort to explain why. Cedric exhaled dramatically and the redhead couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his lips.

“Just...” suddenly earnest again, “just promise that when you win tonight, you won’t dump me for the crowds of girls you’re bound to get.” He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at him.

Fighting off a smirk, Cedric sat up and cupped Fred’s face in his hand.

“I already have crowds of girls,” he said, causing Fred to roll his eyes, “but do you see me cuddling with any of them? No. Of course not, because I don’t want them. Just you.”

Fred grinned and stood up, extending his hand for Cedric to grab, “that was a little bit gay, Diggory.” And they walked hand in hand up to the castle, Fred feeling a little less doubtful than before.

———

The two boys, one clad in yellow and black Triwizard robes, the other in scarlet and gold with the smallest ‘Potter Stinks’ badge hidden on the inside of his jacket, stood in silence under the stands where the rest of Hogwarts was slowly beginning to file in.

Their foreheads were no more than an inch apart and Fred wanted nothing more than to throw himself around Cedric and kiss him and ask him to use his prefect privileges to make it against school rules for the two to ever be apart.

He didn’t understand why he was so nervous. Fred Weasley didn’t typically get nervous, unless you count that one time in Herbology when Cedric had complimented his work on a particularly tricky Puffapod and he had found himself unable to produce words. But now, years later, with Cedric in front of him, holding his hands, the sound of rowdy Gryffindors growing louder overhead, he had no reason to be nervous. 

So why did he feel like there were walls closing in around him? 

Cedric planted a small kiss on Fred’s forehead, just above the arch of his right eyebrow and smiled his, ‘I know you’re upset right now but if you don’t tell me why, there’s nothing I can do to help’ smile, which was really his, ‘I hate seeing you like this so will you just fucking tell me what’s wrong?’ smile. 

When it became obvious that Fred wasn’t in a talk-about-your-feelings mood, as if he ever was, Cedric cleared his throat and said, “I’d better go and stand with the others, I expect it’ll be time to start soon.”

He nodded, “You’re right, you should go.” Cedric was looking at him expectantly, grey eyes locked on brown, waiting for him to say something else, _anything_ else. “Before you go...kiss me. For good luck.”

Cedric snorted, “For good luck, my arse,” but he pulled Fred in close nevertheless and kissed him softly, sweetly, wanting to savour every contour and crack of his lips. 

It was irrational, stupid even, but neither of them could quite shake the idea that it felt like a goodbye.

———

Moments later, Fred was up in the stands, wedged between George and Ron and Hermione who were, unsurprisingly, bickering. 

“Will you two just get together already?” Fred shouted over the noise of the crowd, “it’s exhausting watching you pretend to hate each other.” Satisfied by Hermione’s obviously forced laugh and Ron’s pink ears, he turned toward the maze, where Cedric was looking up at him, smiling widely.

He felt his heartbeat quicken, as it always did when Cedric looked at him like that, and he blew an exaggerated kiss to the prefect when he was sure no one else was looking. The pair were so wrapped up in each other that they almost missed the crash of the gong signalling the beginning of the final task, but Mr. Diggory gave his son a clap on his back that brought him out of his Fred-induced trance. With a brief nod of good fortune in Harry’s direction, the two Hogwarts champions made their way into the maze.

The wild, green shrubbery closed over behind them, and again behind Viktor, then later Fleur. All there was left to do was wait for somebody to send up red sparks or win, Fred supposed.

Around forty minutes later, just as the students were starting to grow restless, tiny beads of crimson light shot into the air from the left side of the maze. Fred jumped to his feet so fast that he knocked George off balance but he didn’t care, didn’t even notice. All he cared about was who those sparks came from, whether their name was Cedric Diggory, and whether or not he was okay.

When Fleur was escorted out of the same opening she went in through by Madame Maxime, she didn’t look the same as before. She was hunched over, not her usual poised and elegant self, and she was shaking violently. Whatever had happened in that maze had left her hollow. Numb.

Fred closed his eyes again, counting down from a hundred just like Cedric had taught him to when his thoughts got too loud and his pulse raced. Everyone around him had erupted into a cacophony of applause, partly for Fleur, but mainly because they were one step closer to having a Hogwarts champion. Fred didn’t care. He supposed he should be happy that Cedric hadn’t been forced to surrender yet, but that also meant that he was still in there, still enduring whatever horrors lay within the labyrinth. His heart ached for his Hufflepuff.

This pattern repeated when Viktor stumbled out of the maze, led by Igor Karkaroff into thunderous chanting from his Durmstrang peers. Even despite his growing sense of unease, Fred couldn’t help but join in the chorus of ‘Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts’ that had broken out now that either Harry or Cedric would definitely win the tournament.

For a while, the maze was eerily quiet. There wasn’t even a rustling of leaves to indicate the turning of a corner, or the _snap_ of a twig breaking beneath booted feet. Fred was in the middle of a rather heated discussion with Hermione about the ethics of wand manufacturing when something glowing near the entrance to the maze caught his eye.

Adrenaline soared through Fred’s veins as he looked over and realised that there, in a heap on the ground, was Harry, the Triwizard Cup and Cedric. _His_ Cedric. He screamed until his throat burned and he was gasping for breath but who cared, because his Cedric was the Triwizard Champion, and most importantly, because his Cedric was okay.

They say the most terrible sound in the world is a mother’s cry when she loses her child, but Fred would beg to differ. I’m sure if you had been there that day, and heard Amos Diggory’s strangled sob as he fell to his knees beside his dead son, you would beg to differ too.

Fred and his brothers had raced down to where Cedric lay, eager to see what the fuss was about and congratulate the winners. It was George who realised first. He clapped a hand to his mouth and turned away, his eyes shut tight as though if he opened them, he may never stop seeing the cool grey of Cedric’s staring back at him, unblinking and unseeing.

The other Weasley twin, the twin with slightly less freckles, the twin who was ‘an inch and a half taller, thank you very much’, the twin who was madly in love with the dead boy lying at his feet, ran. He ran as far and as fast as he could from the body and from Harry’s wails and from Ginny’s worried gaze. Somewhere near Hagrid’s hut, Fred collapsed and sobbed thick, painful tears that made his chest hurt. Truth be told, he was grateful for the sting because it reminded him that he was real. That Cedric had been real. Before long, the world went black and Fred welcomed the darkness.

———

The next day was a blur. Apparently there was to be some sort of assembly in Cedric’s honour. Fred couldn’t bring himself to attend, couldn’t bring himself to look at Malfoy, whose father had been there in the graveyard where his boyfriend’s body had lay on the filthy ground for Merlin knows how long.

He couldn’t let himself think about it too deeply, the graveyard, lest the bile start to rise in his throat once more. 

No, Fred couldn’t face the assembly. He chose to stay in the empty Gryffindor common room, running his thumb over a polaroid he had taken with Cedric just days before. Cedric had his arm around him, and Fred was whispering something in his ear that had made him laugh. He held the picture to his chest, counting back from a hundred and trying to memorise the creases by Cedric’s eyes when he laughed.

 _For good luck my arse._ Those had been the last words Cedric spoke to him. Out of all of the whispered I love yous and long speeches about why Fred made him the happiest Hufflepuff alive, ‘for good luck my arse’ was the legacy he would leave behind for his Fred.

He was right, too - the kiss wasn’t for good luck. Fred had just wanted to hold him, to feel their lips touch, to run his fingers through Cedric’s tousled, dark hair. It seemed impossible to comprehend that he would never hold him again. 

After the assembly, George, followed by the rest of Gryffindor house, stepped through the portrait hole, his cheeks wet with tears. 

“It was really nice, Freddie. I think he’d have liked it.” Fred wanted to ask how the hell he would know what _his_ Cedric would’ve liked, and George must have noticed his frustration because he enveloped his brother in a tight hug and mumbled into his shoulder, “I know you love him. He loved you too.”

They pulled away, both crying and nodding, saying nothing at all and yet everything in the world all at once. In that moment, Fred let himself believe that things would be okay, because he had loved Cedric, and Cedric had loved him back, and George had seen it. George had understood.

George was living proof that it hadn’t all been a dream, even though it had felt like one to Fred.

**Author's Note:**

> this is dedicated to mirel and all of the other fredric shippers on twt, i hope i made u cry mwah


End file.
